All "Superchunk" stories

It wouldn’t be quite right to say that Superchunk frontman and Merge Records co-founder Mac McCaughan has never released a solo album. After all, his Portastatic side project has six albums to its credit, and all of them are basically solo albums. Still, McCaughan’s new LP Non-Believers, is the first he’s ever released under hi… More »

In a couple of weeks, longtime Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan will release Non-Believers, the first solo album he’s ever recorded under his own name. We’ve heard “Lost Again” and the 7″ version of “Box Batteries,” and now McCaughan has made a video for the lilting DIY synthpop song “Wet Leaves.” The video comes from director… More »

Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughan is about to release Non-Believers, his first official solo album, and we’ve already posted first single “Lost Again.” “Box Batteries,” another song from the album, is a glorious lo-fi garage-rock yelp of a song, one that’s about to get its own 7″ release tomorrow. The 7″ version of the song feature… More »

Mac McCaughan has been making heartfelt and catchy-as-hell music — both with his long-running band Superchunk and his more-or-less-solo side project Portastatic — for decades. But he’s waited until now to release an album under his own name. This spring, McCaughan will release his official solo debut Non-Believers, an album that dwells on teenage feeling… More »

Mac McCaughan has been making great records with his band Superchunk for decades, and he’s been recording with his solo side project Portastatic for nearly as long. But he’s never released an album under his own name until now. In May, McCaughan will release Non-Believers, the first album he’s ever dropped under his own name. More »

Last week, Superchunk frontman Mac McCaughin fulfilled a Halloween tradition by sharing a solo cover of the Sisters Of Mercy’s “First And Last And Always.” This week, he’s assembled his full band to cover “Come Pick Me Up,” a classic from Ryan Adams’ 2000 album Heartbreaker and arguably the greatest song Adams has ever written. More »

Split Single is a supergroup of sorts: The band consists of drummer Jon Wurster from Superchunk and the Mountain Goats, Britt Daniel of Spoon, and frontman Jason Narducy from Bob Mould’s band, Superchunk, and the owner of some outrageously sexy elbows. Split Single released their new LP, Fragmented World, in April, and today we get… More »

North Carolina-based Merge Records is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. From taking over baseball games to planning their own four-day festival, they’ve been doing so in style. The next part of their celebration is a 24-minute documentary chronicling the rise of the indie label. It features interviews with employees and artists and narration from… More »

The indie giant Merge Records is a hometown institution in Durham, North Carolina, and it’s maintained ties with another hometown institution: The Durham Bulls, the local Triple-A baseball team. When SPIN’s David Bevan wrote his great profile of the label last year, much of it took place at a Merge-themed night at the local stadium. More »

Besides fronting Split Single (Britt Daniel’s other other band), indie-rock veteran Jason Narducy is a member of the Bob Mould Band and Superchunk and has logged time playing with Verbow, Robert Pollard, and Telekinesis. That’s an illustrious career, and judging from the very funny new Split Single promo video, it seems Narducy has accumulated a… More »

I didn’t post one of these lists last week, because Thanksgiving, which meant that we had a ton of worthy videos to choose from this week, and that plenty of them didn’t make it. And this would also be a good place to point out, as our own Michael Nelson noted to me, that the… More »

Earlier this year, New York Times pop critic Jon Caramanica wrote a piece about pop’s Summer Of Smooth, about how many of this year’s big warm-weather crossover hits were soft and breezy and immaculately produced and comforting pieces of throwbacky, slick pseudo-R&B. Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” drove the narrative, but it also encompassed Bruno Mar… More »

As punk lifers with decades in the game, Superchunk are good and familiar with every possible old-guy-in-the-club scenario, and their new video for “Void,” a song from their truly great 2013 album I Hate Music, features a whole lot of them. Director Scott Jacobson has assembled a cast that includes every possible alt-comedy fixture named… More »

Last Halloween, we presented the 10 best Misfits songs. This Halloween, Superchunk has your Misfits fix covered. “Children In Heat” didn’t crack our list, but the Merge Records braintrust’s rousing reading of the song makes a good case that maybe it should have. Also, the cover art, which seems to feature bassist Laura Ballance rocking… More »

Superchunk’s recent LP I Hate Music had a lot of music we loved, in fact we gave it Album Of The Week when it came out this summer. Now the band’s released an acoustic version of the album cut “Breaking Down.” Listen to it below. More »

Superchunk are on tour right now in support of their most recent record I Hate Music. Last night, the band stopped by Late Night With Jimmy Fallon to play “Void.” Bassist Laura Ballance, who isn’t currently touring with the Superchunk, joined the band for this one performance. Check it out below, as well as a… More »

Superchunk’s new I Hate Music manages to be a gut-punch and a fist-pump all at once. It’s among the year’s most emotionally resonant records, an all-time great indie band finding fresh life by reflecting on death. Although “Staying Home” is about the surest sign your youth is slipping away — opting for an evening i… More »

Over 100,000 fans hit the Seattle Center for this year’s Bumbershoot over Labor Day weekend. Performers included Kendrick Lamar, MGMT, Fun., Heart, Gary Numan, and Death Cab For Cutie playing their now 10-year-old LP Transatlanticism start to finish. Our photographer Alex Crick caught those acts and a bunch more; check out his pics in the… More »

Superchunk don’t hate music. We know this. The North Carolina band have been making it for more than two decades, and the music that they’ve made has way too much joy and desperation and impossible need in it for them to have anything but the most fervent love for the stuff. And then there’s the… More »

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The Doors are part of a very specific category of classic-rock artists: the gateway artists. The bands that — assuming you weren’t around in the ’60s — are amongst the first names you explore when you start digging into pop music’s past. Though keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore were all… More »

Last night, U2 played the seventh night of an eight-night stand at Madison Square Garden. (Our own young classic rocker Ryan Leas reviewed one of those shows earlier in the week.) And at last night’s show, the band introduced a few special local guests. There was New York royalty Paul Simon, who came out to… More »

After reportedly showing up half an hour late, rapper Travi$ Scott got his Lollapalooza set shut down after only 5 minutes by encouraging fans to jump the security barrier and rush the stage. Festival organizers deemed the resulting chaos to be unsafe and shut the whole thing down, with security forcibly removing Scott from the… More »

Morrissey often uses his True To You website to write about cases of what he considers to be societal injustice, as he did in the recent post blasting the killer of Cecil the lion. But as Pitchfork points out, Morrissey’s latest post for the site details a much more personal violation. Morrissey writes that, a… More »

Eminem is a pretty fit dude — for a while, he was even attached to star in Antoine Fuqua’s new boxing movie Southpaw. So how does Eminem stay a pretty fit dude? By working out compulsively. And in a new article on Men’s Journal, the rapper details his compulsive exercise regimen. “In the early days,”… More »

Lollapalooza takes place this weekend in Chicago, and most of the sets from the festival will be livestreaming via Red Bull TV in case you can’t (or don’t want to) leave the comfort of your own home. Some of the acts performing this weekend include Paul McCartney (with a highlights-only set streaming), Metallica, the Weeknd,… More »

Superproducer Mark Ronson stopped by for a live in-studio session at Australian radio station Triple J today. As usual, he assembled a crack team of musicians to back him up, including Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and Kirin J. Callinan on guitar. The band performed a great psyched-out cover of Queens Of The Stone Age’s “I… More »

Drake has already released not one but two diss tracks in response to Meek Mill’s ghostwriting allegations. After Funkmaster Flex promised a Meek response track Monday night on Hot 97 and failed to deliver, people were pissed, and everyone began to wonder if this mega-beef were already over. But no — the soap opera continues! More »